| Thanks to Mike Lawler’s decisive vote to gut health care, nearly half a million New Yorkers are “confronting an expensive and confusing marketplace as they search for new coverage.”
New reporting from Politico reveals that Lawler’s vote for Republicans’ Big, Ugly Bill included “a multibillion-dollar cut to New York’s Essential Plan,” leaving roughly 225,000 New Yorkers completely uninsured while others are paying hundreds of dollars more in skyrocketing premiums.
REMINDER: Lawler spent months promising New Yorkers that he would not vote to gut Medicaid or raise costs on middle-class families, only to turn his back and vote YES on the single largest cut to Medicaid in history.
DCCC Spokesperson Riya Vashi:
“Mike Lawler voted to gut health care, and now New Yorkers are paying the price. Hudson Valley voters are sick and tired of Lawler’s lies and betrayal, and they are more than ready to show him the door in November.”
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Politico: Massive health insurance upheaval leaves New Yorkers with big new bills
- Nearly half a million New Yorkers recently booted from a federally funded health insurance program are confronting an expensive and confusing marketplace as they search for new coverage.
- New York’s Essential Plan caters to low-income residents who earn slightly too much to qualify for Medicaid and do not get health insurance through their jobs. But a July 1 policy change nixed eligibility for people earning over 200 percent of the federal poverty line — roughly $31,920 annually for individuals, or $66,000 for a four-person household.
- The upheaval left about 450,000 former Essential Plan enrollees scrambling to find a new plan they can afford. Roughly half of them have enrolled in other kinds of insurance, according to preliminary state data shared this week with POLITICO. But those plans are bringing big new bills.
- Ulster County resident Lee Bonvissuto, who was previously on the Essential Plan, signed up for a silver-level insurance plan — designed to cover 70 percent of an enrollee’s health care costs — from the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace and now has to shoulder about $800 in monthly premium payments.
- “It’s exorbitantly expensive,” Bonvissuto, a self-employed public speaking coach, said in an interview. “It feels like we have no choices.”
- As states brace for as many as 10 million Americans to lose their health insurance under President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax-and-spending law, New York offers a preview of the upheaval expected to ripple through the U.S. next year when the biggest changes go into effect.
- The 2025 megalaw, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, slashed federal health care spending by more than $1 trillion, including a multibillion-dollar cut to New York’s Essential Plan.
- The complicated picture has bewildered New Yorkers who discovered their Essential Plan coverage was ending from a notice in the mail.
- “Consumers are confused and upset,” said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York, a nonprofit that helps people navigate the state’s insurance marketplace. “I don’t think people are understanding that this is because of Donald Trump signing the One Big Beautiful Bill a year ago. They’re thinking that the state has abandoned them.”
- Some New Yorkers were eligible to stay on the Essential Plan or automatically qualified for Medicaid because their income went down, according to the state Department of Health. But the preliminary state data indicate roughly 225,000 people are newly uninsured.
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